JMicron Brings SSD Cost Down with New Flash Controller and Process Technology

SSD is a new trend in storage technology as a more robust solution compared to conventional hard disk drive. However, it is not getting good traction due to its sky high pricing. Good news now, JMicron is planning to release a new NAND flash controller aiming to bring down the total BOM (Bill of Material) cost as an effort to make it an affordable storage solution for public.
Named as JMF612, it utilizes a TFBGA based ARM9 core processor with integrated 32KB of ROM and 128KB of RAM, that being designed to resolve previous shuttering issue observed in its predecessor chip, JMF602(B) without the need to combine few of them together in order to boost random read/write performance. Obviously, this has able to bring down the overall cost, few times below its rivals such as Indilinx and Samsung’s solutions. On top of these, the JMP612 controller chip will be pairing with NAND flash fabricated using smaller process technology, potentially 32nm or below that further bring down the manufacturing cost while increasing NAND flash density.

Although it is claimed to be cheap in pricing, the chip controller doesn’t compromise with its performance and functionalities. It will be featured with NCQ (Native Command Queuing) that can prioritize data transmission for multimedia applications in SSD usage as well as advanced data encryption protocol such as AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) for enhanced security protection.

No pricing information yet, more detailed information will be published when the company demonstrating its early prototype samples during the Computex event held in Taipei next week. Consumers may have to wait until middle of 2010 before they can experience the actual products.